The Baltimore Ravens have seemingly made very little progress in contract negotiations with Lamar Jackson, and one team executive shared an honest comment about the situation this week.
During an appearance on the “Bernie Kosar Show” on Wednesday, Ravens executive vice president of player personnel Ozzie Newsome was asked how he reacted when the Cleveland Browns gave Deshaun Watson a fully guaranteed $230 million contract last year. Newsome said he has enough to worry about with his own team but admitted that Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said Watson’s contract “did create some problems.”
“Every club has to do what they have to do with contracts and with drafting,” Newsome said. “I’ve got enough problems dealing with this club that, you know what, I don’t worry about (that). But our owner did say that contract did create some problems. What we have to figure out is if that’s gonna be the norm or if that’s an outlier.”
What Newsome said has become very obvious by now. There have been numerous reports that Jackson wants a deal that is comparable to the one the Browns gave Watson. The problem is that multiple star quarterbacks have signed new deals since, and none of them got close to $230 million guaranteed.
Jackson has admitted the Ravens offered him a fully guaranteed deal worth $133 million over three years. He confirmed that while blasting the team on Twitter. The full guarantee at signing is the most important figure in an NFL contract. If Jackson was offered $133 million, that would be more than what Russell Wilson got from the Denver Broncos and Kyler Murray got from the Arizona Cardinals last offseason.
Given this admission directly from team staff, it's clear that both Jackson and the team are trying to gauge the temperature of the market right now. He’s free to negotiate with other teams now that the Ravens gave him the non-exclusive franchise tag, and he may be altering his expectations a bit.
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